Advances in the field of wireless LAN technology has led to the availability of relatively inexpensive wireless LAN equipment, which, in turn, has resulted in the emergence of publicly accessible wireless LANs (e.g., “hot spots”) at rest stops, cafes, libraries and similar public facilities. Presently, wireless LANs offer users access to a private data network, such as a Corporate Intranet, or a public data network such as the Internet. The relatively low cost to implement and operate a wireless LAN, as well as the available high bandwidth (usually in excess of 10 Megabits/second) makes the wireless LAN an ideal access mechanism through which a mobile terminal user can exchange packets with an external source.
Within the wireless LAN, there exists one or more Access Points (APs) each typically comprising a transceiver for exchanging radio frequency signals with a mobile terminal user. Each AP communicates with the mobile terminal user on a particular channel. In most radio technologies, such as the radio technology embodied in the IEEE 802.11b standard, adjacent channels tend to overlap. For this reason, geographically adjacent APs within the wireless LAN try to assign non-overlapping channels to avoid interference. Often such channel assignments require manual intervention or specific protocol modifications. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't work well when geographically adjacent APs belong to wireless LANs operated by separate entities that lack the incentive to cooperate to reduce radio frequency interference.
Thus, there is need for a technique for automatically selecting channels in a wireless LAN to reduce interference without any modifications to the underlying communication protocol.